Texas History for Kids: Lone Star Lives and Legends, with 21 Activities

By Karen Bush Gibson

The larger-than-life story of the Lone Star State

 

Encapsulating the 500-year saga of the one-of-a-kind state of Texas, this interactive book takes readers from the founding of the Spanish Missions and the victory at San Jacinto to the Great Storm that destroyed Galveston and the establishment of NASA’s Mission Control in Houston while covering everything in between. Texas History for Kids includes 21 informative and fun activities to help readers better understand the state’s culture, politics, and geography. Kids will recreate one of the six national flags that have flown over the state, make castings of local wildlife tracks, design a ranch’s branding iron, celebrate Juneteenth by reciting General Order Number 3, build a miniature Battle of Flowers float, and more. This valuable resource also includes a timeline of significant events, a list of historic sites to visit or explore online, and web resources for further study.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press
• Release date: Feb 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781613749920

Karen Bush Gibson

Karen Bush Gibson has written dozens of children's books on many different subjects. She writes about people, places, and history because she loves research. Gibson is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.????????????????????

Book preview

Introduction

How do you explain Texas to someone who has never been there? Do you talk about the Wild West qualities or the modern cities of steel and glass erupting from the plains? Is Texas the mesas, plateaus, and desert valleys of West Texas? The long line of beaches, islands, and marshes along the coast? Or the gently rolling land of Hill Country, or the Piney Woods of East Texas?

You can ask the same about the people—cowboys, oilmen, strong women, Latinos, or technology geniuses. Like many states, the area today known as Texas has been ruled and influenced by many countries and cultures—Spanish, Mexican, French, German, Czech, and more. Each left its mark.

Texas is many things to many people.

Texas is a huge state—268,820 square miles—and probably has the most recognizable shape on the map. That area covers a variety of geographical terrains and people.

But Texas is also an attitude. Texans like to brag that they do things big in the Lone Star State. That includes the history. From the early dinosaurs to flying in space, Texas delights in the stories of its land and people.

For years, a story has circulated that Texans were quite upset at losing the distinction of being the largest state in the Union when Alaska was admitted as a state in 1959. Alaska, at over twice the size of Texas, was upstaging Texas, and that just would not do. The story says that some Texans got together and joked about melting Alaska.

Texas has a population of over 26 million people, coming in second to California. But Texans have more room to move around with 96.3 people per square mile; California has to fit 239.1 people into the same area.

Author John Steinbeck may have said it best in Travels with Charley (1962): I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion…. Texas is the obsession, the proper study, and the passionate possession of all Texans.

Texas Fast Facts

Capital: Austin

State Nickname: The Lone Star State

State Motto: Friendship

Entered Union: December 29, 1845

Population (2012 estimate): 26,059,203

Percentage of population under 18 years old (2012): 26.8

Total Land Area: 268,201 square miles

Length of Coastline: 367 miles (tidal shoreline 3,359 miles)

Highest Point: Guadalupe Peak, 8,751 feet

Lowest Point: 0 feet, where the Rio Grande meets the Gulf of Mexico

Largest City: Houston (fourth largest in United States)

Second Largest City: San Antonio

National Park Acreage: 8,618 acres

Official State Flower: Bluebonnet

Official Mammal: Longhorn

Official State Dish: Chili

First Word Spoken on the Moon: Houston

Number of Amusement Parks: 12

Number of Oil Wells: 832

Average Number of Tornados Each Year: 139 (more than any other state)

How Often Hurricanes Strike the Texas Coast: Roughly once every 9 to 16 years

1

Cretaceous Times

The sun was shining upon Glen Rose, in the north central part of Texas. It was the kind of day made for being outdoors. And that’s just where nine-year-old George Adams was. Instead of going to school one day in 1909, George decided to go exploring at the nearby Wheeler Branch Creek, which was part of the Paluxey River. George probably scanned the ground for interesting bugs and tested himself by throwing rocks toward the other side of the creek.

Tracks found in Dinosaur Valley State Park.

Fredlyfish4, Wikimedia Commons

George stopped what he was doing as soon as he saw something strange in the shallow clear water—the tracks of a large animal with three toes on each foot. It looked like the tracks of a giant bird. George was interested, and a little scared. He ran to school to tell his teacher and principal what he found. The school had an impromptu field trip to see the tracks.

They weren’t the only people to see the tracks at the Paluxy. The river was also popular with moonshiners like Charlie Moss, who was scouting locations to set up a still to brew illegal liquor when he came across the tracks.

Southern Methodist University paleontologist Dr. Ellis Shuler identified the tracks as belonging to a theropod dinosaur, one that primarily traveled on two feet. Dr. Shuler published a paper about the tracks in 1918. Afterward, the tracks were largely forgotten, although replicas were made and sold at tourist stops throughout the Southwest. That’s where fossil collector R. T. Bird saw the theropod tracks, at a trading post in Gallup, New Mexico. Bird, who worked for the American Museum of Natural History in New York, thought the tracks showed amazing detail. He decided to return to New York through Glen Rose, Texas.

The actual tracks were even more impressive. Bird believed that they probably belonged to the Acrocanthosaurus, a smaller relative of Tyrannosaurus rex. The tracks ranged from 12 to 24 inches long and 9 to 17 inches wide. And there were more. Bird was able to uncover more of the trackway, a collection of the footprints as the dinosaur moved.

While looking for more theropod tracks, Bird came upon a print that looked like an elephant track. But it wasn’t; it belonged to a sauropod. Not only was it the first he had ever seen, it was also one of the clearest prints anyone had ever found of the four-legged dinosaurs.

Upon further investigation, Bird discovered a trackway with prints from multiple dinosaurs, both sauropods and theropods. Bird’s theory was that the smaller, carnivorous the-ropods were chasing the larger plant-eating sauropods. Sauropods traveled in herds with the adults on the outside and the youth in the middle. Moving only 2.7 miles an hour, they needed to use size to their advantage to escape the faster theropods traveling 5 miles an hour.

Although Glen Rose is located in the Paluxy River Valley where evergreen woodlands and prairie grasses cover the terrain, it hadn’t always looked like this. During the Cretaceous period, Glen Rose was on the Texas coast, and a shallow sea covered the area. The shells of crustaceans left the area rich in limestone, so the dinosaurs left their tracks in calcium-rich mud.

ACTIVITY

Plaster Cast Tracks

People can learn a lot from the tracks they see on the ground. Look around for animal tracks in a place where the soil is damp. Make your own plaster cast track, just like the professionals do.

Materials

Paper towels

Hairspray or spray lacquer

Scrap cardboard

1 pint water in a plastic bottle

1 pound plaster of paris in a large strong plastic ziplock bag

Stick or ruler

Small trowel or spade

Old toothbrush

Newspaper or bubble wrap

1. Carefully clear away any small rocks or loose soil from around the edge of the track. Soak up any excess water by dipping a paper towel into the water. If your track is in loose soil or sand, try spraying it with hairspray first to hold the soil together better while you’re making the cast.

2. Make a border or wall around the track with the cardboard.

3. Pour half of the bottle of water into the plastic bag of plaster. Seal the ziplock and mix by kneading through the bag to get a smooth and even consistency. Add more water if needed.

4. After the plaster of paris is mixed, cut the bag in one bottom corner. You can squeeze the plaster through the hole onto the track. Pour from one side and let it flow into the track.

5. Tap the surface of the wet cast with a stick or ruler to release any air bubbles.

6. After about 30 minutes once the plaster is totally dry, use the spade or trowel to lift it from the ground. If you make a large plaster cast, it may take longer to dry. Dig a few inches away from the cast.

7. Allow the removed cast to dry overnight before trying to remove any soil left on the bottom of the cast. When you do remove excess soil, use an old toothbrush.

8. Spray with hairspray or lacquer to strengthen the mark and prevent it from crumbling during handling.

9. Wrap the cast in newspaper or bubble wrap to protect it from damage.

Twenty-one of the 300 known dinosaur species lived in what is now Texas. Discoveries made so far suggest that dinosaurs first appeared in the late Triassic period before flourishing in the Cretaceous period. The tracks at Glen Rose became Dinosaur Valley State Park, and people come from around the world to see them.

About 113 million years ago limestone, sandstone, and mudstone was deposited along the shoreline of an ancient sea. Over the last million years, the river has sculpted the rock and worn it down to reveal large amounts of rocky ground on the river bottom.

Dinosaur Valley State Park

Dinosaur Valley State Park opened in 1972, though it had been designated a National Natural Landmark by the National Park Service in 1968. Located just northwest of Glen Rose on the Paluxy River, the park covers approximately 1,524 acres. In addition to the tracks in the riverbed, visitors can see dinosaur models from the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City—a 70-foot Apatosaurus and a 45-foot Tyrannosaurus rex. Over 200,000 visitors enjoy the park each year.

A full-scale dinosaur statue in Glen Rose Dino Park.

From Texas With Love, Wikimedia Commons

Upriver from Dinosaur Valley State Park, the paleontology department from Southern Methodist University was at work on dinosaur bones found at a ranch in 2007. Graduate student Peter Rose had never seen anything like them. At 60 to 70 feet long and 12 feet high, the 20-ton dinosaur had a long neck, even longer than its tail. Interestingly, its footprints matched those of the sauropod tracks in Glen Rose. The dinosaur was named the Paluxysaurus jonesi in 2007 and designated the Texas state dinosaur two years later.

Prehistoric Animals

ABOUT 65 million years ago, the dinosaurs disappeared. A giant meteor hit the Earth so hard that tidal waves traveled inland at least 150 miles from the coast, depositing treasures from the sea in the Brazos River area. Mammoths, giant armadillos, and other prehistoric mammals replaced the dinosaurs.

Both dinosaurs and prehistoric mammals left behind bones, fossils, and tracks that can be seen at museums throughout the world. In recent years, the Houston Museum of Natural History and the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas have joined the world’s museums in showcasing the early prehistory of Texas.

In 1989, 12-year-old Johnny Maurice and his father were looking for shark’s teeth in the yellow-gray shallow mud near Fort Worth. The region was once a marine area, and fossilized remains of marine animals have been found there by amateur fossil hunters and professional paleontologists. Instead of shark teeth, Johnny found the bones of the first baby nodosaur, an armored dinosaur related to the ankylosaurus. Scientists say that this nodosaur died soon after hatching. Later, 19-year-old Cameron Campbell found an adult nodosaur skull in the same area.

And dinosaur discoveries continue to be made. In Arlington, a city between Dallas and Fort Worth, excavations began in 2008 in an area called the Arlington Archosaur Site, located just down the street from a Starbucks. The area, once a swampy bog, holds a treasure trove for scientists. There, researchers have found a complete skeleton of an early duck-billed dinosaur, in addition to a new species of theropod. The area also includes prehistoric crocodiles, fish, sharks, turtles, plants, and trees.

Midland Minnie

LIKE PALEONTOLOGY, the studies of archeology and anthropology are always evolving. New techniques for dating, analyzing, and preserving artifacts continue to be developed. For example, artifacts that include organic matter can now be accurately dated with carbon-14 or radiocarbon dating.

ACTIVITY

Clay Dough Dino

Plenty of dinosaurs roamed Texas. Do you know which ones? Research which dinosaurs lived in the state—a few are already listed in this chapter. Find out as much as you can about the appearance of one of these dinosaurs, and then make a clay model of it.

Adult supervision required

Materials

2 cups water

Food coloring (optional)

3½ cups all-purpose flour

½ cup salt

1 tablespoon cream of tartar

2½ tablespoons vegetable oil

Baking sheet or waxed paper

1. Boil the water in a medium-sized pot on the stove.

2. Add food coloring to the water if you want your dinosaur to be a specific color.

3. Mix the dry ingredients—flour, salt, cream of tartar—in a large bowl.

4. Remove the water from the stove.

5. Add the vegetable oil to the water.

6. Pour the water into the large bowl with the dry ingredients. Stir until mixed.

7. Let the clay cool until you can comfortably work with it.

8. Knead the dough on a baking sheet or wax paper.

9. Create your clay dough dinos